Police and Public Discourse Black Violence

New Perspectives in Policing

MAY 2015

VE RI TAS HARVARD Kenned y School

Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management

National Institute of Justice

The Police and Public Discourse on "Black-on-Black" Violence

Anthony A. Braga and Rod K. Brunson

Executive Session on Policing and

Public Safety

This is one in a series of papers that will be published as a result of the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety.

Harvard's Executive Sessions are a convening of individuals of independent standing who take joint responsibility for rethinking and improving society's responses to an issue. Members are selected based on their experiences, their reputation for thoughtfulness and their potential for helping to disseminate the work of the Session.

In the early 1980s, an Executive Session on Policing helped resolve many law enforcement issues of the day. It produced a number of papers and concepts that revolutionized policing. Thirty years later, law enforcement has changed and NIJ and the Harvard Kennedy School are again collaborating to help resolve law enforcement issues of the day.

Learn more about the Executive Session on Policing and Public Safety at:

, keywords "Executive Session Policing"

hks.harvard.edu, keywords "Executive Session Policing"

Introduction

Police departments, especially in urban jurisdictions, are often called on to quell outbreaks of serious violence such as sudden increases in homicides, aggravated assaults and robberies. Inner-city residents and their children usually suffer the most serious harm when violent crime waves occur. Unfortunately, due to a long history of exclusion from important economic and social opportunities, residents of disadvantaged urban neighborhoods are primarily minorities and often black. Research has long documented that most violence occurs within racial groups and that black Americans, often victimized by black offenders, experience disproportionately high levels of violent crime. The term "black-on-black" violence, while statistically correct, is a simplistic and emotionally charged definition of urban violence that can be problematic when used by political commentators, politicians and police executives. To the vast majority of urban black residents who are not involved in violence or criminal behavior, the term invokes visions of indiscriminate and aggressive police enforcement responses applied to a broad range of black people. The term also

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seems to marginalize serious urban violence as a "black problem" that, in the minds of some black residents, may only receive a cursory response or, worse yet, be ignored by police departments entirely.

We believe that most police departments in the U.S. are dedicated to reducing violence, investigating crimes, and protecting victims irrespective of race. However, poor analyses and inappropriate descriptions of urban violent crime problems can sometimes lead to the adoption of problematic policing policies and programs. Moreover, careless discussions of the nature of urban violence can further alienate law-abiding black residents who need and desperately want to partner with the police to create safer communities. In this paper, we briefly describe how news media coverage sometimes distorts racial issues, present a (hopefully) more cool-headed analysis of black-on-black violence (measured as a homicide problem), and consider how misconceptions of black-on-black violence coupled with over- and/or under-policing of black neighborhoods can further erode citizen confidence in the police.

The Distorting Role of Mass News Media Coverage of Urban Violence

As Surette (1998) suggests, what most Americans know about crime and justice comes from popular media's portrayal of these subjects. Unfortunately,

Braga, Anthony A. and Brunson, Rod K. The Police and Public Discourse on "Black on Black" Violence. New Perspectives in Policing Bulletin. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2015. NCJ 248588

media outlets have an interest in presenting crime and justice issues in a way that captivates audiences and stimulates passions. Even though crime has steadily decreased over the last two decades, personal safety remains high on the list of public concerns, in part, because citizen perceptions are influenced by news media sources intentionally designed to make us feel passionately about the subject (Surette, 1998; Crayton and Glickman, 2007). Obviously, there are many positive aspects of intensive, fervent coverage of crime and justice issues: untended crime problems may be addressed, miscarriages of justice may be corrected, victims and their families may receive relief, and other public goods may be generated.

However, the media can also distort crime and justice issues by constructing attitudes and perceptions that do not match the reality of contemporary crime problems. Media distortions of the reality of black-on-black violence in cities can take many forms. Persistent coverage of homicides and shootings in black neighborhoods without appropriate contextual information can perpetrate inaccurate stereotypes of blacks as innately violent people. When media outlets provide extensive coverage of homicides involving white victims, especially white female victims, but little ongoing coverage of homicides involving black victims, it promotes a perception among black citizens that killings of black people are less important than killings of white people. And, by unfortunate association, that the police are not devoting, or do not think they need to

The Police and Public Discourse on "Black-on-Black" Violence | 3

devote, sufficient resources to investigate black victim homicides.

A casual sampling of characterizations of blackon-black violence in the media by political commentators, politicians and police chiefs reveals persistently vague definitions of the phenomenon and occasionally problematic associations with ideas about morally bankrupt behaviors in black families and communities.

Jason Riley, Columnist, Wall Street Journal1

"The black crime rate in 1960 was lower than it is today ... Was there less racism or less poverty than in 1960? This is about black behavior. It needs to be addressed head-on. It's about attitudes toward the criminal justice system in these neighborhoods, where young black men have no sense of what it means to be a male or what it means to be black."

Chris Wallace, Political Commentator, Fox News2

"The president talked ... about black-on-black crime. And as I looked into this, the numbers are just staggering ... should the African American community be focusing on that, the black-on-black crime, the carnage in our inner cities and not on George Zimmerman? ... When you have people demanding, `Let's go after George Zimmerman,' hate crimes, economic boycotts of Florida, that isn't talking about the real problems in the inner city."

Rahm Emanuel, Mayor, City of Chicago3

"The issue of gun violence is not limited to Chicago ... It's an urban problem." The urban violence, Emanuel said, "gets put in a different value system. These are our kids, these are our children, and the worst thing for us to do in my opinion would be to say, `Let's not discuss this.' We need to make sure that once a crime is committed, we don't allow them back on the street to become perpetrators or victims. ... A piece of this is the culture ... Part of this is having an honest conversation, given the lion's share of the victims and the perpetrators are young African-American men."

Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor, City of New York4

"Ninety percent of all people killed in our city -- and 90 percent of all those who commit the murders and other violent crimes -- are black and Hispanic. It is shameful that so many elected officials and editorial writers have been largely silent on these facts ... Instead, they have argued that police stops are discriminatory because they do not reflect the city's overall census numbers. By that flawed logic, our police officers would stop women as often as men, and senior citizens as often as young people ... To do so would be a colossal misdirection of resources and would take the core elements of police work -- targeting high-crime neighborhoods and identifying suspects based on evidence -- out of crimefighting ... . The absurd result of such a strategy

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would be far more crimes committed against black and Latino New Yorkers. When it comes to policing, political correctness is deadly."

Ray Kelly, former Commissioner, New York Police Department5

"The stark reality is that crime happens in communities of color ... About 70% to 75% of the people described as committing violent crimes -- assault, robbery, shootings, grand larceny -- are described as being African-American." ... "The percentage of people who are stopped is 53% AfricanAmerican ... So really, African-Americans are being under stopped in relation to the percentage of people being described as being the perpetrators of violent crime."

There are certainly other concerning perspectives put forth in the popular media on this issue. It is important to recognize, however, that some police chiefs steer clear of vague black-on black violence descriptions by focusing on "disparate victimization" in black disadvantaged neighborhoods. For instance:

Edward A. Flynn, Chief, Milwaukee Police Department6

"Here's what's disproportionate to me ... With about 40 percent of Milwaukee's population, African-Americans represent 80 percent of our homicide victims. They represent 60 percent of our robbery victims and 80 percent of our aggravated assault victims." ... "It's as though the arresting of African-Americans

takes place in a vacuum ... If I draw an ellipse over our poorest neighborhoods and then find an ellipse and draw it where our most 911 calls are, and then draw the ellipse over where most of our crime victims are ... it's the same neighborhoods and the same zip codes."

Nevertheless, the explicit and implicit promotion of inaccurate and vague descriptions is generally offensive to black Americans.

Before we begin to analyze the issue more closely, it is worth noting what black-on-black homicide is not. We believe the following ideas are wrong and ultimately not helpful.

? Black-on-black homicide is random. The term "random" is commonly defined as "proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern."7 The perspective that black-on-black homicide is not patterned lends itself to an interpretation that any citizen could spontaneously be the victim of a horrendous crime at any place or any time. The promotion of this misunderstanding may result in heightened fear of violence among black residents and visitors to majority black neighborhoods. Increased fear of violence may undermine the full participation of black residents in neighborhood life and lead to weakened community control over local youth and public spaces.

? Black-on-black homicide problems are symptomatic of persistent lawless behavior by black people. This wrongheaded idea

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leads to an implicit assumption among the public that a high proportion of black residents are involved in crime and disorder. This misperception promotes uncertainty regarding whether blacks share the moral standards of mainstream society and, as a result, diminishes levels of mainstream concern and determination to find evidencebased responses to the problem.

? Black-on-black homicide problems are driven by black people's tolerance for criminal and immoral behavior. This false perspective can influence police officers to mistakenly view entire black neighborhoods as supportive of criminal behavior and exacerbate an already fragile relationship.

Black Homicide Victimization and Black Homicide Offending Rates

In this section, we focus on black and white comparisons. This crude categorization stems from a lack of crime data that consistently classify information for Hispanics and non-Hispanics as well as for Asians and Native Americans (Lauritsen and Sampson, 1998). Consequently, most analysis of disparity and discrimination in crime and criminal justice has focused on comparisons between blacks and whites. In general, the available scientific evidence on crime victimization suggests the following patterns:

? Blacks suffer much higher rates of personal violence and violent victimization than whites.8 As discussed in greater detail below, this is particularly true for homicide victimization.

? Racial differences are reduced substantially for household crimes and personal theft victimization.

? Although whites represent the majority of suspects arrested for all crimes, blacks are disproportionately more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, especially homicide, relative to their share of the U.S. population.9

Between 1980 and 2008, blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders (Cooper and Smith, 2011). The homicide victimization rate for blacks (27.8 per 100,000) was six times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000) (figure 1). Blacks accounted for slightly more than 51 percent of all gun homicide victims between 1980 and 2008, despite representing only about 13 percent of the U.S. population. The homicide offending rate for

Figure 1. Homicide Victimization Rates, by Race, 1980-2008

Percent 50

40

30

20

10

0

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year

Source: Cooper and Smith (2011: 11).

Black

White

2005

2008

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Figure 2. Homicide Offending Rated by Race, 1980-2008

Percent 60

40 Black

20

White

0

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2008

Year

Source: Cooper and Smith (2011: 11).

Figure 3. Homicides, by Race of Offender and Victim, 1980-2008

Percent 60

Black on black

40 White on white

20

0

1980

1985

1990

1995

Year

Black on white White on black

2000

2005

2008

Source: Cooper and Smith (2011: 13).

blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost eight times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000) (figure 2). The vast majority of homicides are intraracial, with 84 percent of white victims killed by whites and 93 percent of black victims killed by blacks (figure 3). Black males between the ages of 18 and 24 are dramatically overrepresented in homicide. Homicides of young black males in this age category peaked at 195.9 victimizations per 100,000 in 1993 and subsequently declined to 91.1 victimizations per 100,000 in 2008. Homicides by young adult black males peaked at 365 offenders per 100,000 in 1993 and subsequently declined to 175.8 offenders per 100,000 in 2008.

Black homicide victimizations are less likely to be cleared by arrest than white homicide victimizations. A recent analysis of 2000-2007 homicide data from the National IncidentBased Reporting System (NIBRS) reported that 57.2 percent of white homicide victim cases were cleared by arrest while only 50.6 percent of black homicide victim cases were cleared by arrest (Roberts and Lyons, 2011). In general, the circumstances of homicide incidents powerfully influence clearance rates. For example, offenders in gang-related and drug-related homicides are much less likely to be arrested by homicide detectives (Wellford and Cronin, 2000), in part due to lack of witness cooperation. Further, black males are more likely than white males to be involved in these kinds of homicide incidents (Cook and Laub, 2002). Without citizens coming forward to provide detectives with much needed information, investigations of gang and drug homicides can hit dead ends quickly, with no substantive leads.

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Some analysts suggest that the killings of black male victims receive less investigative time and effort from homicide detectives (Roberts and Lyons, 2011), whereas others suggest that white female homicide victims receive more investigative time and effort (Holcomb. Williams, and Demuth, 2004). Most available research on clearance rates finds little evidence of homicide detectives valuing or devaluing victims based on race (Puckett and Lundman, 2003; Litwin, 2004; Lundman and Myers, 2012), but there are some noteworthy exceptions. For instance, a multivariate analysis of homicides in Los Angeles County between 1990 and 1994 suggested that white homicide victims received additional investigation attention and, as a result, their cases were more likely to be solved than those involving nonwhite homicide victims (Lee, 2005).

The extremely high homicide victimization and offending rates for young black males in the early 1990s has been tied to gun violence epidemics tipped off by the initiation of crack cocaine sales in most U.S. cities during the late 1980s (Blumstein, 1995; Braga, 2003; Cork, 1999). Although the intensity of black homicide rates has changed over the last century, the persistence of the black-white homicide rate gap has not (Hawkins, 1999). Criminologists have long considered the reasons for observed racial disparities in violence and have put forth a variety of explanations, including individual factors (most notably, IQ and self-control), family socialization, subculture of violence and economic deprivation theories (see, e.g., Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985). Unfortunately, most of these perspectives have been unsatisfactory in

explaining observed differences in homicide victimization and offending rates for young black and white males. As summarized by Lauritsen and Sampson (1998: 65-66):

Constitutional explanations are problematic on empirical grounds -- the variations within any minority group are greater than the variations between them. Although there is good evidence that family socialization inf luences children's delinquency and aggressive behavior patterns, there is no consistent evidence that factors such as lack of supervision and erratic/harsh discipline account for race differences in crime when socioeconomic conditions are taken into account. Subcultural explanations of group variation in offending have yet to show that black and white Americans differ significantly in their values and attitudes regarding crime, or that these differences in values have an independent influence on offending disparities. Finally, research emphasizing access to the legitimate economic system typically finds that race differences persist even after controlling for socioeconomic status.

Another diagnostic approach is to examine the community-level underpinnings of racial disparities in violent crime to identify the neighborhood characteristics that lead to high rates of violence (Sampson and Wilson, 1985). Empirical evidence suggests that the capacity of neighborhood residents to achieve a common set of goals and exert control over youth and public spaces, termed "collective efficacy,"

8 | New Perspectives in Policing

protects against serious violence (Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls, 1997). The presence of community-based organizations, which draw membership from individuals within and outside specific neighborhoods, predicts collective efficacy and collective civic action (Sampson, 2012). Concentrated disadvantage in urban neighborhoods, which are often populated by black residents, undermines local collective efficacy and gravely limits the ability of residents to address serious violent crime problems (Sampson and Wilson, 1985). As a result, urban homicides, largely committed with guns and perpetrated by and against young black men, tend to concentrate in disadvantaged black neighborhoods.

Urban environments experience the largest proportion of homicides, and black Americans tend to make up larger shares of urban populations relative to suburban and rural areas. Between 1980 and 2008, nearly 58 percent of homicides occurred in U.S. cities with a population of 100,000 or more (Cooper and Smith, 2011). More than one-third of all homicides in the U.S. during that same time period occurred in cities with one million or more residents. Citylevel analyses provide an important opportunity to understand the nature of homicide problems better. While useful in describing objective information on homicide incidents such as age, race, sex and weapon type, national data systems, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Reports, are wellknown to be limited in providing reliable and valid information on homicide circumstances

and relationships between victims and offenders (Braga, Piehl and Kennedy, 1999; Maxfield, 1989; Riedel and Zahn, 1985). Careful withincity research on homicide facilitates a deeper understanding of the situations, dynamics and relationships associated with elevated rates of black homicide victimization and offending.

City-Level Analysis of Black Homicide Victims and Black Homicide Offenders

We use detailed data on homicides in Boston to examine the nature of black homicide victimization and offending in urban settings. Although modest differences are associated with variations in local dynamics across other U.S. cities, the basic picture of black homicide victimization as highly concentrated among a small number of active offenders involved in high-risk social networks is essentially the same. Research has consistently documented that violence driven by conflicts within and among gangs, drug-selling crews and other criminally active groups generate the bulk of urban homicide problems (see, e.g., Block and Block, 1993; Kennedy, Piehl and Braga, 1996; Papachristos, 2009; Tita et al., 2004).

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 24 percent of Boston's estimated 618,000 residents identified themselves as black. Between 2000 and 2013, Boston experienced 836 homicides. Nearly 74 percent of Boston homicide victims were black (615 of 836), and roughly 68 percent of arrested homicide offenders were also black (294 of 430). In cleared black homicides (218, 35.4 percent of 615), 91.7 percent of the offenders were black

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